Misinformation

Part of 31 Plays in 31 Days.  

            Misinformation
            By Jacob Juntunen

AN OLDER WOMAN stands behind a counter. A WOMAN enters.

            OLDER WOMAN
Dzień dobry, witamy w Bolesławcu.

            WOMAN
I’m sorry, I don’t speak Polish.

            OLDER WOMAN
Is okay. We get many Americans at Bolesłiec. We have a lovely new pattern for a teapot and—

            WOMAN
Actually, I just want some information.

            OLDER WOMAN
You need Warsaw directions? We are right in heart of Old Town, so is bus to all hotels—

            WOMAN
You are Pani Pilecki?

            OLDER WOMAN
Yes.

            WOMAN
And you lived on Chłodna Street in 1942?

            OLDER WOMAN
Many people did.

            WOMAN
You knew my mother, Ewa Leibowitz.

            OLDER WOMAN
I did not.

            WOMAN
She was a child in 1942.

            OLDER WOMAN
We have lovely set of cups and saucers here—

            WOMAN
You sent her away. At night.

            OLDER WOMAN
There is much misinformation in 1942.

            WOMAN
You said you were a safe house and that you could hide my mother in a Catholic orphanage after my grandparents were killed. But you turned her away.

            OLDER WOMAN
I sell pottery.

            WOMAN
She remembered that night. Your husband pacing behind you, smoking—

            OLDER WOMAN
We had no tobacco in 1942.

            WOMAN
You refused to help her, sent her into the darkness—

            OLDER WOMAN
She obviously lived if you are daughter.

            WOMAN
How could you send a child back to the ghetto?

            OLDER WOMAN
I tell you, is much misinformation—

            WOMAN
My information is fact. I read her diaries, researched, and I swore I would track you down as soon as I could get a visa to come to Poland.

            OLDER WOMAN
Is all big mistake. But look at lovely blue and white teapot­ on upper shelf, is good keepsake, could be heirloom to your Polish heritage—

            WOMAN
I don’t want a goddamn teapot! And I’m Jewish, not Polish.

            OLDER WOMAN
We all had Polish papers before 1939.

            WOMAN
They sure helped Mom, didn’t they?

            OLDER WOMAN
You know what misinformation is?

            WOMAN
I have your name, your address—

            OLDER WOMAN
Information is commodity in 1942. Paid for with life.

            WOMAN
—and my mother managed to survive, to get to America, even when you refused—

            OLDER WOMAN
Misinformation is also traded for lives. Say a woman is in the Resistance and is told man looking to help child will bring Jewish orphan to your house at night. But woman is also told this man is a traitor to Resistance, using child as pawn to find path from safe house to hiding places—

            WOMAN
But he wasn’t, he was a Captain in the Home Army trying to help my mother, and he’s dead, so I can’t thank him, but I tracked you down so you can apologize—

            OLDER WOMAN
If information about man is true, every safe house and Jewish child hiding in Catholic orphanage is destroyed. If misinformation, one child is turned away.

            WOMAN
My mother.

            OLDER WOMAN
I do not know your mother. But is good she survived. Too many dead. My parents. My husband. My children.

Silence.

            WOMAN
How much is that blue and white teapot?

            OLDER WOMAN
Forty-eight złoty. We can wrap and make safe for travel.

            WOMAN
I’ll take it then. As a keepsake.

Jacob is head of playwriting at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. 
Read his full lengths here.

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